9-Mar-2012byTHF in Hoot's Corner | Comments Off on UK Environment Secretary’s son spent months online boasting about using steroids

The son of a prominent UK government official, Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman, may become the youngest Brit to ever be banned from sport for doping violations.Â Her son Jonny is 17 years old and has been on the Internet for a long time bragging about his steroid use.

Don

THE son of Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman spent months on the internet boasting about abusing performance-enhancing drugs.

Body-building fan Jonny, 17, a former England under-16s rugby player, could become the youngest Briton to be banned from sport for doping violations.

He has been suspended by club side Harlequins after "drugs paraphernalia" were found at Â£31,000-a-year Tonbridge School, where he is a boarder.

Last night there were calls for an investigation into the pressures put on young sports stars as anti-doping experts stressed the public interest in reporting the dangers of steroids and the reasons sport must be kept drug-free.

The full extent of Jonny's steroid shame can be revealed for the first time today after an injunction banning the Daily Star Sunday from reporting the case was lifted. The teenager somehow obtained a cocktail of steroids and took them late last year in what he said was an attempt to help him recover from a potential career-threatening knee injury suffered in a school match last September.

Months before the injury, as he was battling to get into the England under-18s squad, he boasted about anabolic steroids on various websites, leading one worried poster to ask: "Where are your parents?"

There is no suggestion he actually took the drugs, just that he posted about it online.

Jonny, who boasts he can deadlift 250kg and has 17.5in arms, is registered on several body-building websites using the name Spelmanjm. In February 2011 he was banned from the forums of website Bodybuilding.com after a post that talked about steroid use and asked for advice on which he should choose.

In a statement last week his parents, Caroline and Mark Spelman, said: "Our son, who was then 16, was injured in September 2011 and took some widely available drugs in order to aid his recovery.

"Our son knows that taking a banned substance can never, ever, be right and he is deeply sorry for the mistakes he has made and is determined to learn from them.

"We will do everything we can to support him." The previous youngest rugby star to be banned for drugs was Adam Dean of Chester, who was 18 when suspended in 2005.